CARE director pleads for life

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Margaret Hassan, the kidnapped director of CARE International in Iraq, appeared in a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera.Photo: Al-Jazeera

Kidnapped British aid worker Margaret Hassan has pleaded for
London to save her life by scrapping a plan to redeploy British
troops in Iraq and by pulling them out, as more than a dozen people
died in clashes around the country.

"Please help me, please help me, these might be my last hours,"
a haggard and terrified Hassan said on a tape broadcast Friday by
Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera.

"I will die like Mr (Kenneth) Bigley," the British hostage
beheaded in Iraq earlier this month, she said.

"Ask Mr Blair to pull the (British) forces out of Iraq and not
to bring them to Baghdad," she said, referring to Prime Minister
Tony Blair who has agreed to Washington's request to redeploy
troops from the south to US-controlled areas.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he would not meet
kidnappers' demands for Hassan's release.

"Nobody is going to go for their demands ... and give in to
their demands," he told Fox News.

"We have to remain very strong and adamant that we should bring
the terrorists to justice," he said in an interview to be aired
Saturday.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "The video of
Margaret Hassan which has been released by her kidnappers is
extremely distressing."

Hassan, 59, was taken hostage on Tuesday as she drove to her
office in western Baghdad.

She has spent nearly half her life in Iraq and is married to an
Iraqi. She was a vocal opponent of the US-British invasion in March
2003. The director of Iraq operations for CARE International has
lived in Iraq for 30 years and is a naturalised Iraqi citizen.

The identity of her kidnappers is not known, although
Dubai-based al-Arabiya television broadcast a video of her,
apparently supplied by her captors.

"We hope she will be released," said Allawi. "We are doing our
best, we are praying for her and we are definitely doing our best
to release her.

"She is a very fine lady, she is a very dignified lady and she
has helped Iraq a lot and it is a very shameful thing that this
happens in Iraq."

Britain said on Thursday an 850-strong battle group would be
posted outside Baghdad as part of the redeployment that will free
up US troops for an expected assault on insurgents in the
violence-plagued western city of Fallujah.

The international relief agency CARE, of which Hassan is local
director, announced it was suspending operations in Iraq after her
abduction.